U.s. Offers Swap That Would Free Daniloff

September 11, 1986|By New York Times

WASHINGTON — The United States, in a new proposal, has suggested that an American journalist in Moscow and a Soviet employee of the United Nations in New York who are being held on espionage charges be turned over to their respective ambassadors and that the American then be allowed to return home without trial, administration officials said Wednesday.

Amid discussions on a way to resolve the latest crisis in Soviet-American relations, State Department and White House officials said they could not predict whether the Soviet Union would agree.

The arrangement would involve Nicholas Daniloff, Moscow correspondent of the magazine U.S. News & World Report, and Gennadiy F. Zakharov, a Soviet employee of the United Nations.

In Moscow, the spokesman of the Foreign Ministry has said that the Russians backed the idea of release in the custody of the envoys, but only pending a trial in each case. Daniloff was reported by his wife, Ruth, to have said Wednesday by telephone that he favored such an arrangement.

Ambassador Yuri V. Dubinin of the Soviet Union met Wednesday with Secretary of State George Shultz. A White House official said later that there were no fundamental shifts in the situation.

The United States has threatened to retaliate if Daniloff is not released. But the United States continues to hold off on retaliation with a view to allowing negotiations to go on unimpeded, officials said. One possible retaliatory step would be cancellation of a Chautauqua-type town meeting in Riga, Soviet Latvia, next week, in which 270 Americans were to take part.